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THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 11 & 18, 2013
fragile economy," he says. "I mean, if it
wasn t for whisky, this island would be a
bird sanctuary."
Bruichladdich was a state-of-the-art
distillery when it opened, in 1881.
Its original owners were three brothers,
the Harveys, whose family also owned a
pair of industrial distilleries on the
mainland. Many island distilleries were
converted barns; Bruichladdich was
built for the purpose of turning malted
barley into ethanol, and constructed
from modern concrete. (The Harveys
contractor, based in Glasgow, held the
local patent.) Bruichladdich still looks
much the same, with whitewashed two-
story buildings surrounding a stone
courtyard, which is now used as a park-
ing lot. The new Bruichladdich chose
aquamarine as its signature color, be-
cause it evoked the way the ocean
looked on sunny days. Even on an en-
tirely cloudy Sunday this past autumn,
Bruichladdich seemed like a cheerful
place---nothing like the forbidding fac-
tory of 1989. Islay is only about seventy
miles west of Glasgow, but getting there
by car requires a three-hour drive and a
two-hour ferry ride. (It also has a small
airport.) More than ten thousand cus-
tomers make the trip every year, driving
vigilantly along narrow island roads that
they must sometimes share with stray
sheep. Whisky tourism creates nearly as
many jobs on Islay as whisky produc-
tion, and on this day the distillery was
closed but the gift shop was full of visi-
tors, who seemed to be
sampling rashly and buying
carefully.
In a cramped and creaky
second-floor office, Reynier
was dressed in work clothes:
olive army jacket, brown
army shirt, and unhemmed
trousers, reinforced at the
knees. He is fifty-one, and
the culture shock he felt
when he first moved to Islay has never
quite subsided. "I m everything that this
island isn t: privately educated, Roman
Catholic upbringing, London, wine
trade, and businessman," he said. "Here
it s state-controlled, socialist, Protes-
tant." He speaks at length and in bursts,
with a fidgety impatience that can con-
vey irritation or enthusiasm or, more
often, a bit of both. And while some is-
landers never quite warmed to him (one
described him as "aloof "), they imme-
diately appreciated that his venture
would create jobs if it succeeded.
Bruichladdich s ten-year problem
was partly a marketing problem: malt
drinkers have come to view age as a
proxy for quality, and the industry has
played along, using age statements to
justify high prices. In Reynier s view,
this constrains distillers and misleads
consumers. "Age doesn t matter," he
said. "Who the fuck thinks that a ten-
year-old is better than a nine-and-a-
half, or inferior to an eleven-and-three-
quarters? It s totally arbitrary!" Generally
speaking, aging in wood makes whisky
richer and mellower, but age is only
one of many variables to consider. (Once
it has been bottled, whisky should re-
main more or less stable.) In any case,
Bruichladdich couldn t afford to indulge
in age snobbery, because the last of the
old regime s spirit was turning ten in
2004. So Reynier and McEwan found
ingenious ways to make young whisky
delicious---and to sell it for old-whisky
prices.
In 2006, Bruichladdich started re-
leasing a wide variety of limited-edition
whisky experiments, many of them bot-
tled at six years old, or even younger.
McEwan launched a new line, Port
Charlotte, devoted to peated whisky, in
the Islay tradition; then he launched
another, Octomore, which claimed to
be "the world s peatiest whisky." In
2009, the distillery began producing a
line of gin called the Bota-
nist, using local herbs and
flowers. This was a particu-
larly canny decision, be-
cause gin doesn t need time
to mature. "Instant cash,"
McEwan says. "You make
it today, you sell it one week
from today." Most Scottish
distilleries age their spirit in
used bourbon casks, but
Bruichladdich often supplements these
with wine casks, which impart flavor,
color, and cachet. McEwan mixed and
matched spirits to create new expres-
sions like Laddie Classic, a mid-priced
introductory Scotch, and Black Art, a
mysterious and expensive multi-vintage
release. Not long after Bruichladdich
was reborn, Whisky Magazine named
McEwan its distiller of the year. And,
partly because Bruichladdich released so
many different whiskies, it became a
fixture in the review sections of whisky
magazines and blogs. Some reviewers
grumbled about the profusion, but most
applauded the company s curiosity, and
some bigger companies began expand-
ing their ranges, too.
McEwan is sixty-four, and for much
of his career he has been, in addition to
a master distiller, a global whisky am-
bassador. His speaking voice is warm
and resonant, and he rolls his "r"s with a
craftsman s precision. Where Reynier is
ironic and astringent, McEwan is the-
atrical and sometimes ostentatious. "I m
still chasing rainbows," he says, by way
of explaining his open-ended quest to
discover exactly how delicious a whisky
can be.
One Monday, McEwan was seated at
his desk, dressed in high-end business ca-
sual: sharply creased gray wool slacks,
crisply ironed shirt, blue tie with match-
ing cufflinks. The walls were tiled with
awards and citations, and next to his
computer sat a tatty thesaurus, which he
uses to write the digressive essays that
form the basis for the company s offi-
cial tasting notes. One Bruichladdich
whisky---the "classic" twenty-two-year-
old expression---promises to deliver a
dizzying chain of sensations: "sweet yel-
low fruits, drizzled with honey and
crushed almonds"; "freshly picked sum-
mer flowers"; "custard cream and toasted
barley"; "banana bread and vanilla fudge";
"marzipan"; "Abernethy biscuit"; "marine
citrus meringue." To enjoy a dram of
Bruichladdich, sip it neat, and then add a
splash or more of mineral water, which
helps release volatile compounds that
bring out notes of fruit and spice. (Add-
ing ice can dull the taste, and may also
make the whisky taste like whatever is in
your freezer.) It s a simple process, but
consumers hoping to reproduce Mc-
Ewan s results at home will find, no doubt,
that some variant of the uncertainty prin-
ciple applies: the more research you con-
duct, the less reliable your data become.
That afternoon, McEwan led a tour,
starting with the warehouse, where
different vintages of whisky were ma-
turing in thirty-five thousand wooden
casks, some of which bore the names of
the wines they once held: d Yquem, Pé-
trus, Le Pin. Adam Hannett, the young
warehouse manager, scrambled up to a